Free Credit Reports Now Available From the FTC

The Federal Soldier Trade Committee (FTC) have put up a new website (www.AnnualCreditReport.com) where United States occupants can obtain free transcripts of their credit reports from the three major credit report bureaus (Equifax, TransUnion and Experian). The FTC land site was put up as portion of the Carnival and Accurate Credit Transactions Act enacted last December. The land site was put up in an attempt to assist fighting the increasing menace of identity theft. The credit reports must be ordered from the FTC land site to get them for free. If you order your credit report directly from one of the credit report agencies' sites, you'll be charged a fee for the report.

While a number of websites on the Internet currently offer free credit reports, these free reports necessitate a credit card be set on data file as a free trial rank of their credit report monitoring service. The reports have got been free if you retrieve to call off the trial membership, but can stop up being quite costly if you accidentally forget. The new FTC land site is marketing free and no credit card is required.

To bespeak your credit reports, you'll need to supply your name, address, Sociable Security number and day of the month of birth. In addition, the credit bureaus may inquire you for other information to confirm your identity such as as your current monthly mortgage payment. Consumers can also order their free credit reports by calling 877-322-8228 (toll-free) or by mail by authorship to: Annual Credit Report Request Service, P.O. Box 105281, Atlanta, gallium 30348-5281

The free credit reports aren't currently available to all United States residents. They're being phased in over the adjacent twelvemonth by part to forestall the system from being overwhelmed. Currently occupants living in Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, New Mexico, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, Washington, and Equality State can obtain the free credit reports. Residents in the Middle West can get their free credit reports beginning in March, occupants in the South beginning in June and occupants in the East beginning in September.

Instead of ordering credit reports from all three credit report agencies at once, you might desire to see staggering the three reports so that you have one credit report every 4 months. This allows you to see how your credit report is changing over clip and whether any errors you happen have got been corrected. It will also increases the opportunities that you will catch any attempts at identity theft more quickly. If, however, you're considering a large purchase such as as a home or car where your credit score will be used to determine your eligibility, you'll desire to get all three right away. This volition allow you to take care of any possible problems as soon as possible.

Once you've received your reports, reappraisal each 1 carefully. The three credit reporting agencies manage billions of pieces of information each twelvemonth and some estimations have got mistakes in as many as one-half of the credit reports with a major mistake in ever one in four. By making certain that all the information contained in the reports is accurate, you will guarantee that you have the best rates from credit agencies in the future.

Now that credit reports are free of charge, there is no ground not to bespeak them each and every year. Keeping checks on your credit report is one of the most effectual ways to protect yourself against identity theft and do certain that all the information that your creditors are accessing is accurate.